Hey, kids. Hitting Week 141, my Council of Panels this time around is made up of Was Taters, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and Jody.

Little on my side this time around. I did read Batman Annual #1, which I’ve seen a lot of gnashing of the teeth about. Personally, I didn’t mind it. While that episode of the Batman cartoon was great and we got a lot of fun Freeze stories out of it (and Batman and Robin, sadly), I think they’ve gone as far as they could with it and it’s time to at least try something different.

Animal Man Annual #1
Jeff Lemire and Timothy Green II

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise Part 2
Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

I’m still enjoying the hell out of the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes series and it’s making me interested in getting around to reading the entire Archie Comics run. Mainly because I only recall three things about it:

1) The first issue is a retelling of the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang episode that my comic guy is obsessed with. That’s when a bunch of thugs in terrible outfits went around committing crimes while telling their victims, “When the cops ask who did this, tell them it was the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang!” Somehow, the Turtles actually got the blame.

2) As a kid, I had one issue of the series, where the Turtles and some friends of theirs fought Shredder and his goons in a wrestling ring. I mainly remember it because I was confused as to why Leatherhead was on the Turtles’ side.

3) There’s an issue late in the run where the Turtles go back in time, punch Hitler and intimidate him into committing suicide. That’s pretty hardcore for a kids comic.

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11 comments to “This Week in Panels: Week 141”

I think I had the wrestling issue too. But I don’t remember Shredder being involved. As I recall, the Turtles (in weird outfits) got kidnapped by a giant floating cow head and forced to space-wrestle some space-wrestlers (Leatherneck, a Buff Bagwell-y Ace Duck, and this four armed dog dude named Cryin’ Houn’), Mojoverse style.

…Reading that back, I might have just been eating paint chips as a kid.

And yeah, the Archie stuff was good. I remember loving the art as a kid; a lot of cartoon-based comics look slightly off model just by dint of being still images, but I remember the Archie stuff having this really clean look that was cartoony, but not flat/stiff.

@Josh Hechinger: It’d take some work to dig up the issue, which I’m sure I still have, but that sounds about right. As I recall, Raph took a liking to his wrestling outfit and continued to wear it for some time. I also have the issue where he punches Hitler. I’m not sure how they managed it, but after a few issues of TV series adaptations, the Archie TMNT seems to have been allowed to do just about anything it wanted.

I dug the Archie series too; I remember seeing it on newsstands in Waldenbooks way back in the day. But my most profound Turtle comics memory is reading an issue of the old Eastman and Laird run (I think) in the comic book store. It was about some dude who got screwed over by the Turtles or something and got obsessed with them, to the point where he eventually went home, looked in the mirror, and saw a turtle staring back at him, at which point he blew his own head off.

@peterv I really liked Grim Leaper. It could go extremely south, as it’s very invested in being dry to the point of acridity, but I liked the humor, and I really liked the art. As long as it doesn’t go quite as edgy as Forgetless did, I think it’ll be good times.

I hadn’t read anything else by the creator, so I didn’t know what I was in for, but I gather he trends toward fairly dark topics.

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